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| Public Fusbal tables. Good place to make friends! |
- Public fusbal tables in the park: 3 Bolivianos for about half an hour.
- Entry to national park: 2.50 Bolivianos (25p)
- Professional good quality haircut: 8 Bolivianos (80p)!! This one in particular amazes me, since I used to think £8 was a good deal at home. No longer.
- An ice cream: 1 Boliviano (10p)
- A bag of fanta: 1.50 Bolivianos (15p) This is clever; to recycle the bottles they just pour it into a plastic bag for you and give you a straw.
- A concert with the allegedly biggest traditional band in Bolivia (and possibly South America) next Thursday - The Kjarkas: 120 Bolivianos (£12). I'm actually not sure if this is good value, having never seen a band at home. But it probably is.
Apparently the average Bolivian wage though is only 1000 Bolivianos a month. This is low because of the high number of people working really poorly paid jobs. A nurse at the hospital here could expect to earn about 2300 bolivianos/month. This is about £230 a month, or £2760 annual wage. I guess although that wouldn't get you anywhere in the UK, here that is enough to live comfortably..
Apart from marveling at the value of things, this week has been fairly busy. We are now in more of a routine - at 8am we start at the hospital here with a ward round or a presentation from one of the Bolivian interns (I understood about 60% I think, mainly because she had slides and partly because medical words in spanish are very similar to medical words in english). After that we can sit in on the clinics with the doctors, or see what surgery is on. I assisted a nice man called Alfredo in doing a laparoscopic cholecystectomy the other day. Surgery is very hygienic here, after scrubbing up we get our arms sprayed with iodine just to be extra safe. But in other respects they are very different from UK procedures - gloves are washed at the end in order to be re-used, gowns and sheets are all washed, they stapled up the scars instead of stitches (very quick!), and because they didn't have the right bag they normally use to take out the gall bladder they just used half a glove. Effective.
Alternatively we can go into the clinic in cochabamba in the morning, which is slightly busier and possibly better for teaching.
Lunch is at 12.30 every day and usually goes on until 2ish. We take our time over things. Then we have a couple of hours to ourself. I tried to be keen and go to the hospital one day, but was told that they don't do things in the afternoon and I should go home again.
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| Me ad Mike with Jose and Jonny, during their shift. What heroes. |
At 4 we go across to our neighbours the bomberos. We usually play football (although at the time of writing our ball is sadly deflating with a puncture. Nobody can be blamed) and chat to them. On wednesday though we asked them if they could recommend a walk for us. Jose and Jonny weren't really doing much since there were no fires to put out, so they gave us a lift in their fire engine (although there are no hoses or ladders, so it's more of a standard van with 'bomberos' painted on the side). We went to pairumani ecotourist park, about 10 minutes drive away, and then walked up through the woods for half an hour to a viewpoint at the top. The firemen had their radio with them just in case there was an emergency, but I'm not sure what we would have done if we had to run down the hill! I wonder how many firemen at home would agree to give us a lift to a hill and then spend the afternoon with us there!
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| The local school leading the parade. |
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| As hospital representatives we were considerably less well organised. |
Semi-highlight of the week: finding an ex-pro basketball player from Argentina in the doctors to get his broken finger seen to and having some good chat about Andy Murray's chances in the US open.
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